In the US, Shopping malls are dying

"Travel is booming. Hotel occupancy is booming. Domestic airlines have flown more passengers each year since 2010, and last year U.S. airlines set a record, with 823 million passengers. The rise of restaurants is even more dramatic. Since 2005, sales at "food services and drinking places" have grown twice as fast as all other retail spending. In 2016, for the first time ever, Americans spent more money in restaurants and bars than at grocery stores."

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/retail-meltdown-of-2017/522384/?utm_source=feed

Hackers warn Trump

" In a lengthy open letter to Donald Trump, the Shadow Brokers explain that they've returned to protest the US missile strike against a Syrian airbase Thursday – an action that marked Trump's first significant move directly opposing the will of Russian president Vladimir Putin. And they warn the president that he will face consequences if he doesn't revert back to his former policy of leaving Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a Putin ally, alone.

The file contained a huge cache of specialized NSA malware, including dozens of backdoor programs and 10 exploits, two of them targeting previously unknown security holes in Cisco routers—a basic building block of the internet. The leak electrified the computer security world, and sent Cisco and other companies scrambling to fix the security holes and lock out the NSA."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/09/hackers-warn-trump-to-get-back-in-line-on-syria.html

NYTimes: Shaking Up the Dinosaur Family Tree

Shaking Up the Dinosaur Family Tree https://nyti.ms/2nCB7y8

"A critical stage in human evolution was walking upright, which freed the hands for grasping tools and weapons. "The parallels with human evolution are very noticeable and make you wonder what they could have achieved," Mr. Baron said. "Toward the end, certain groups like the velociraptors were starting to get intelligent.""

How to get Uber to recognize sexual harassment in 41 easy steps

"...if we women really wanted equality, then we should realize we were getting equality by not getting the leather jackets."

http://mashable.com/2017/02/21/uber-sexual-harassment-41-steps/

Al Franken Scolds GOP Senators For Wasting Everyone's Damn Time on Betsy DeVos

http://www.popsugar.com/news/Al-Franken-Urges-GOP-Senators-Vote-Against-Betsy-DeVos-43130911

"If we cannot set party loyalty aside long enough to perform the essential duty of vetting the president's nominees, what are we even doing here?" 

NYTimes: Trump Foreign Policy Quickly Loses Its Sharp Edge

Trump Foreign Policy Quickly Loses Its Sharp Edge https://nyti.ms/2kYMuiE

Women's March... On the world

https://nyti.ms/2kcyuO7

The Verge: CES 2017: What to expect at the biggest tech trade show of the year

The Verge: CES 2017: What to expect at the biggest tech trade show of the year. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwm664gDM

Koons

A profile of a survivor of the attack at the Bataclan:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/12/surviving-bataclan-you-have-to-live-life-to-the-full-for-all-the-people-who-died

Commemorative sculpture :

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/nov/22/jeff-koons-sculpture-tribute-paris-attacks-bouquet-of-tulips

The American Post Modernist artist Koontz is creating a sculpture to commemorate the terrorist massacre at the Bataclan in France. I was struck be the vapidity of it and to learn more I found the following critique of an earlier work that shed a lot of light on his work. 

"So, when Koons says his work has no meaning, it's because he believes it shouldn't, and that's what makes it good. This kind of hardline Postmodernism has been discredited as overstating the case to the point of stupification and vapidity, partly for the irony of trying to appear more profound by denying profundity exists. I would have understood his art better, and sooner, if I'd had a lobotomy before looking at it. "

From: https://artofericwayne.com/2013/11/21/how-to-understand-jeff-koons-paintings-and-why-they-are-an-attempt-at-original-art-includes-a-top-ten-list-of-his-key-features/

If all that people see is a bunch of cartoon flowers, I'm not sure the message of hope and solidarity is going to come thru. 

Donald Trump’s locker room

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/12/donald_trump_s_locker_room.html

"When the tape came out, Trump dismissed it as "locker-room talk." But what you have to understand about Trump—what you see on that tape, in his meeting with the Times, and in the arena in Cincinnati—is that he's always in the locker room. He's always trying to endear himself to some people by insulting others. If you're in the room, he's your buddy. If you're not, you're just another pussy."

Trump May Have Gotten Carrier To Keep 1,000 Jobs, But Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Coming Back : NPR

http://www.npr.org/2016/12/01/503987418/carrier-will-keep-1-000-jobs-but-trump-faces-a-much-tougher-jobs-problem

""Old-fashioned production and clerical jobs that paid reasonably well to people with only a high school diploma or less, those are disappearing rapidly," said Harry Holzer, professor of public policy at Georgetown University.

In 1973, more than two-thirds of jobs were held by people with a high school diploma or less, according to a 2014 report by the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown. By 2020, they project, that will be flipped; just over one-third of jobs will require a high school diploma alone or less; two-thirds will call for some kind of postsecondary education."

New York Daily News: KING: Even Frosted Flakes dumps Breitbart — because they’re hate

New York Daily News: KING: Even Frosted Flakes dumps Breitbart — because they're hate. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwmNys9Sk

"This is completely and utterly despicable. It's dangerous. A man whose work is too hateful to be affiliated with Frosted Flakes or Allstate Insurance or Vanguard Mutual Funds is somehow good enough for the White House.

Every company should absolutely follow the lead of these other companies and remove their advertising dollars from Breitbart, but the deeper point remains – the man who made it into the hateful platform it is, will now be crafting the direction of our country.

It's an embarrassment to our nation, yes, but it is a normalization of bigotry unlike anything I've ever seen in my lifetime."

Universe has 2 trillion galaxies, astronomers say | Science | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/13/hubble-telescope-universe-galaxies-astronomy

Now it REALLY seems unlikely that we're the only lifeforms in the universe. Go back and read all the evidence for Roswell. Roll the dice 2 trillion times. Which could result in a few crazy different lifeforms. Some of them living in concurrent times and able to reach each other...

"To begin with, there is only part of the cosmos where light given off by distant objects has had time to reach Earth. The rest is effectively beyond our reach. And even within this "observable universe", current technology only allows us to glimpse 10% of what is out there, according to the new findings."

Hua Qiang Bei

https://shift.newco.co/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqiangbei-the-worlds-most-fascinating-electronics-market-f0384d9fca32#.zbvuu65g1

Jeff Lynne

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/6753789/interview-jeff-lynne-revives-elo-grammys-ed-sheeran-traveling-wilburys

"What song has made you the most money?

Probably "Mr. Blue Sky." It has been in a lot of films, and they pay fortunes. When I wrote it [in a [in a Swiss chalet] it had been mist and fog, and I was up in the mountains. I couldn't see bugger all for a week and didn't come up with any songs. Then the sun came out, and I wrote "Mr. Blue Sky" as kind of a joke. It turned into a really nice song."

How to raise a genius: lessons from a 45-year study of super-smart children : Nature News & Comment

http://www.nature.com/news/how-to-raise-a-genius-lessons-from-a-45-year-study-of-super-smart-children-1.20537

"Follow-up surveys — at ages 18, 23, 33 and 48 — backed up his hunch. A 2013 analysis5 found a correlation between the number of patents and peer-refereed publications that people had produced and their earlier scores on SATs and spatial-ability tests. The SAT tests jointly accounted for about 11% of the variance; spatial ability accounted for an additional 7.6%.

The findings, which dovetail with those of other recent studies, suggest that spatial ability plays a major part in creativity and technical innovation. "I think it may be the largest known untapped source of human potential," says Lubinski, who adds that students who are only marginally impressive in mathematics or verbal ability but high in spatial ability often make exceptional engineers, architects and surgeons. "And yet, no admissions directors I know of are looking at this, and it's generally overlooked in school-based assessments.""

How Khizr Khan Helped Democrats Take Back Religious Liberty

"the government can neither discriminate against certain religions nor license certain religions to discriminate against others"

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2016/07/29/khizr_khan_helped_democrats_take_back_religious_liberty.html

Gizmodo: New Simulation Extends Possible Crash Site of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370

Gizmodo: New Simulation Extends Possible Crash Site of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwoIbWzCw

Super Typhoon Nepartak approaches Taiwan, threatening flooding

"Thanks to Nepartak's large size and Taiwan's unique geography, some parts of the island could see as much as 52 inches (1,330 mm) of rainfall over the next day or so."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/07/super_typhoon_nepartak_approaches_taiwan_threatening_flooding.html

NYTimes: A Reading List of Tell-Alls, Strategic Plans and Cautionary Tales in Finance

Here's a story from The New York Times I thought you'd find interesting:

Books to get you caught up on influential deal makers, activist shareholders, the failings of the modern economy and the habits of highly successful people.

Read More: http://nyti.ms/29rBrdi